The nights bled down toward the full moon the way water leaves a cracked basin — not fast enough to see, but you check in the morning and there's less of it, always less, and no way to put any back. Nineteen became fifteen became twelve. And in the high tower, five people who had finally, impossibly, found each other learned what it does to a household to know that one of them has to go, and that the choosing is a knife handed to the one person who has spent her whole life being cut.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

The last time four houses had sat in one room, three hundred years ago, they had split a god four ways and called it peace. Walking into the high council the next dusk, I understood I was the first thing since that had made them all sit down together again — and that they had not gathered to crown me. They had gathered to decide, calmly, in good order, with witnesses, whether I was allowed to keep being whole.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

For one white second I held the whole of it, and I understood why the founders were afraid.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

We had eleven hours until moonrise, and Cas spent the first one doing the thing I'd promised him at the start I'd never let him do again: being alone with it.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

By the morning after the convening, every house in Veymoor had stopped wondering whether to fight over who ruled the city, and started maneuvering over who would own the woman who could level it. I'd traded one war for a worse one, and the worse one had my name on it.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

The noon convening was held in the Accord Hall under all four colors of light, with the whole of Veymoor packed into the galleries above to watch a city decide whether to start killing itself, and I walked in with a paring knife in my boot and a plan held together with spit and stubbornness and the dangerous new certainty that I was not what anyone had told me I was.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

We had until noon to prove that the gentlest man in Veymoor hadn't tried to murder me, and we spent the first hour of it watching his own house throw him away to save itself.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

The thing about four men who'd rather fight each other than breathe the same air is that it takes something genuinely trying to kill them to make them beautiful together — and at three in the morning, three days into being the keystone of Veymoor, something genuinely trying to kill us came up the tower stairs, and I got to watch.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

Nobody warns you that the hardest part of being magically bound to four devastating men forever is the kitchen.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.

You get to Veymoor by going somewhere that isn't anywhere — through a door in the back of a flooded underpass that shouldn't have existed, that I'd walked past a thousand times and never seen, because you can't see the city until the city has decided to be seen by you. And on the night of the worst year of my life, with four impossible men around me like a moving wall, the city decided.

Four Crowns is a serialized why-choose reverse harem fantasy romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.